While other MediaPost newsletters and articles remain free to all ... our new Research Intelligencer service is reserved for paid subscribers ...

Subscribe today to gain access to every Research Intelligencer article we publish as well as the exclusive daily newsletter, full access to The MediaPost Cases, first-look research and daily insights from Joe Mandese, Editor in Chief.

Commentary

Soon, The World Will Speak Via Netflix

Netflix wants to be known as a global content provider, and in its earnings last week, it acted that way.

David Wells, the CFO, noted that “Narcos,” one of
Netflix’s current series, is an especially strong performer in the U.S., which is doubly good news because much of it is in Spanish, and it’s playing in South America, too. (Though
some apparently think the Colombian accent is a little messed up.)

Given the dominance of
English, Neflix can do pretty well with “elites” who both speak the language and have the money, whatever it is called, to spend. But it is trying to add more films and TV shows that are
homegrown.

Repeatedly, CEO Reed Hastings emphasized that in its drive toward world dominance, Netflix does best in those places where things have been translated, and not so well in places
where they haven’t, which makes sense. The objective is to bulk up on foreign languages where our foreign is their domestic.

advertisement

advertisement

For some Third World countries and a lot of other
places where the smartphone is the only Internet device people have, Netflix is trying to improve its delivery to them. And speak their language.

A story in today’s New York Times reports that at the Sundance
Film Festival, it’s been Amazon and Netflix that have been making headlines with deals on promising films. The Times reports Netflix has just made a deal for a horror film “Under
the Shadow,” which is distinguished by the fact that it’s an Iranian film. Here’s the official Sundance synopsis, according to a Web site called, unabashedly,
BloodyDisgusting.com:

“Tehran, 1988: As the Iran-Iraq War rumbles into its eighth year, a mother and daughter are slowly torn apart by the bombing campaigns on the city
coupled with the country’s bloody revolution. As they struggle to stay together amidst these terrors, a mysterious evil stalks through their apartment.”

Mom believes
that “an unexploded missile has carried evil spirits into her home and possessed her daughter,” says BloodyDisgusting.

It’s a small world, after all, when religious
conflicts, horror films and streaming video can all combine for fun and profit. And the whole world can be watching. Seriously, Netflix is now available in Iran and Iraq — and almost everywhere
else in the world except China.

And it is discovering that to the extent it can, it will show many of the same films around the world. Netflix has been translated in Arabic,
for example, and remarkably, foreign language films, which still have trouble getting seen in movie theaters, are suddenly a salable streaming commodity

It’s also
true that Netflix is a little bit pokey in the U.S.

It added only 1.56 million subscribers in the fourth quarter, down from 1.9 million from the same quarter the year before. Without much
fanfare--not like you’d expect fanfare--it also announced that grandfathered longtime Netflix U.S. customers who pay slightly less for HD service, will be getting a $1 per month increase
sometime later this year. That will help the bottom line.